Just Mets

This afternoon in Washington, Matt Harvey will make his long awaited return to the mound after undergoing Tommy John Surgery in October, 2013.
It will be 593 days since Harvey last appeared in a big league game. He last pitched on August 24, 2013 against the Tigers, during which he allowed 13 hits and two runs in 6 2/3 innings.

Harvey expects all of this mastery to simply continues from where he left off when he went down in 2013.

“I looked at this season as another season, picking up from ’13, not looking that I missed ’14,” Harvey said on Monday.

Well, it isn’t that simple, at least not for the millions of onlookers.

What the Mets missed statistically speaks for itself. Harvey has the third-best WHIP (0.985) of any pitcher since 1921 through his first 36 career starts. He trails Vida Blue (0.943) and Jose Fernandez (0.972).

Harvey is also one of only two starters in the last 100 years to allow one run or fewer in 19 of his first 36 career games, the other being Dwight Gooden.

Harvey enters the 2015 season with a 54 1/3 inning homerless streak, the longest active streak among major league starters, and he hasn’t allowed more than one home run in a game in 33 consecutive starts.

His 2.27 ERA was third in baseball in 2013, and that was without pitching a complete season.

He had a league-best 0.4 HR per nine innings and led the league with a 2.01 WHIP, and he did so even after missing the final six weeks of that season. Harvey walked only three batters in 48 1/3 innings after his All-Star Game start in 2013.

But, those are just numbers. His presence is potentially more valuable than any of these utterly phonemail statistics.

Harvey represents all of the hope and promise this franchise has been touting for the last four years during what has been a roller coaster of a rebuild. He has shown to be nothing less than purely awesome, and is not only the ace of the staff, but an ambassador for an era of Mets baseball both the fans and the club itself have been waiting patiently to arrive.

That time is finally here, and it finally counts starting at 1:05 PM today.

Happy #HarveyDay, once again.

It’s pretty incredible, you know. Matt Harvey has 12 career victories and hasn’t started a regular season game for the Mets in 19 and a half months, yet it seems like this has been all anyone’s talked about ever since he went down in 2013.

Everything’s been leading up to this moment. “Wait ’til Harvey’s back,” everyone said, including myself, when talking about this team. Well, he’s back. Today is the moment that Mets fans have been waiting for over a year and a half to experience, and it’s finally here.

The big question, of course, is if Harvey can pick up where he left off in his dominant 2013. Well, if his dominant spring–in which he sported a 1.19 ERA–is any indication, it sure as hell looks like that’s the case. It’s hard to judge off of Spring Training, but in terms of velocity, stuff and the way he attacked the strike zone, it looks like Harvey could even be better than he was, if that’s somehow even possible.

Not to get too deep in The Dark Knight references, but Harvey is the hero the Mets deserve and the one they need right now. This team has had it’s troubles–that’s putting it lightly–since their last playoff berth in 2006, and as they hope to reach that point again this season, players like Matt Harvey give the fanbase a realistic hope that it can be achieved.

The Mets don’t only have their ace back, but they once again have a buzz in this city and a hopeful tone about them as we begin the 2015 season. A lot of that is because of the return of a Cy Young candidate to that already strong starting rotation. Matt Harvey allows Mets fans to dream, and perhaps that dream will become a reality… Starting today.

Happy #HarveyDay, everyone. Let’s Go Mets!